Building Trust for Organizational Change: Expert Strategies with Chris Deferio
8 Jun 2023 · 36 min
Podcast episode (Negotiate Anything) featuring Kwame Christian interviewing Chris Deferio about leading organizational change. Deferio, a specialty coffee consultant and podcast host, explains a three-part approach: (1) build trust and deeply understand root causes by asking questions and involving frontline staff, (2) highlight concrete payoffs for the culture (what's in it for them), and (3) plan and communicate a gradual, well-timed implementation. Emphasis on humility, checking pride, addressing biases, and treating employees as partners in change.
Hello my friend, and welcome to another episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for spending time with us today. It's listeners like you in 181 different countries that have made Negotiate Anything the most popular negotiation and conflict resolution podcast in the world. I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, professor, and the director of the American Negotiation Institute. Before we get started, I have two quick questions for you. Is negotiation a critical part of what you do? Do you need to resolve conflict and persuade at? If you answered yes to both of those questions, visit our website to learn more about our negotiation workshops. We've traveled the country working with professionals just like you and we'd love to have the opportunity to work with you too. Check out the link in the description to learn more. Our guest today is Chris Deferio. Chris is a cafe quality specialist who has dedicated 20 years of his life to working in and studying specialty coffee retailer. Chris is also the creator and host of the industry leading podcast Keys to the Shop, which gives listeners insights, inspiration and tools to grow as a specialty coffee professional. So I had Chris on the show today to talk about how you can persuade people in your organization to change their behavior and create an environment of trust that's strong enough to handle these difficult conversations. I know you're going to get a lot out of this one, so without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Chris, thanks for joining us today.
Oh, happy to be here. Thanks for having me on the show.
Oh man, it's my pleasure. Yes. So how about we get started by telling the audience a little bit about yourself and what you do.
So I am a specialty coffee professional generally, but specifically I'm a consultant for specialty coffee shops and I host a podcast called Keys to the Shop which focuses on retail coffee operations, just helping them optimize their operations through introducing them to different ideas from professionals both in and outside the specialty coffee industry. I've been doing specialty coffee now for 20 years, starting as a barista and then working my way into management training, obviously consulting competitions, you name it. So it's been a really wild ride for the last two decades of being immersed in specialty coffee retail. And yeah, there's pretty much no end in sight. So I enjoy what I do and enjoy helping people.
That's fantastic. And for you listeners out there, make sure you check out the show Keys to the Shop. So you might say to yourself, well, I'm not in the coffee industry. It doesn't matter because there is a lot of great business tips and advice that's that's shared on the show. So I don't want you to miss out on that. So if you get a chance, make sure to check it out.
I appreciate that, Kwame.
Hey, my pleasure, man. Perfect. So how about we start off by giving the listeners a brief outline of where we're going to go and then we can jump into it.
So where I think is most helpful to go, especially in today's kind of work environment, there's always room to learn about change. And so change management, leading change in your team or your company is always a relevant topic. So I want to talk about kind of three things that will really help you navigate it well without alienating people and get the best result possible. Because a lot of times we in management and leadership want to make our mark on a business or on a team and we've just read a book on it or something and we go in hot and we get cold back and we don't want that. And so what we're going to talk about is three things. And those three things are gaining understanding of the issues before all of this, highlighting the payoff for the culture. And then number three, we're going to have a plan going forward for how to communicate. And there's a step before all of those things that I think is really important that will make them all successful.
Yeah, let's go ahead and start with that one.
Yeah. So change management sounds great because it gives you the one who is ushering in the change hope that, oh, finally this thing that I've always hated about X, Y or Z is going to change. But like I said a moment ago, you can come in hot and people aren't going to really be on the same page. One of the reasons why, one of the main reasons why is that you're not communicating in an environment of trust. And that's something that's cultivated purposefully by leadership and management. That is not something you can do as using your positional authority. You have to use sort of a relational authority to create an environment where people trust you, have their best interest in mind and not just the company's best interest in mind. Because the culture that is within a company is not exactly the same as the company. There's a great book by author named Stan Slapp, always like that last name. And his book is called under the Hood. And its basic premise is that the culture, it looks out for itself. And your job as a leader or manager in charge of this group of people is to learn about that culture and win them over. And that's really, really key to ushering in positive change.
I love that point. And I think you're right. A lot of people jump straight to persuasion, trying to change people's minds without setting that foundation of trust beforehand. And one of the things that is frustrating for people who are eager to make change is that trust takes time. It takes a lot of time and it takes repeated investments in the relationship in order to create trust. And so I think when it comes to thinking strategically about our persuasive processes, we need to think long term and think about how we want to implement our strategy down the road and have the necessary patience that comes with creating that relationship. With the foundation of trust.
Exactly. Yeah. And your good ideas alone are not going to woo people. You as a human being, connecting with other human beings is going to be the primary way that people are going to give you the time of day when it comes to changing their world, which is. That's basically what you're doing. For me in the coffee world as a consultant, if you go into a store, if I see something that needs change, you can't just go in there and steamroll what everybody is used to because you've got muscle memory behind the bar. Everyone's used to where things are. If you just start moving things around and you don't respect the culture, then you're going to lose trust with those people. You're not going to come in as somebody who's serving their needs. That's going to erode trust. And it just is not good for anybody. So for most owners, they believe that they have the trust of their employees. But in a lot of cases, what I see is owners of businesses become siloed in the office while the frontline staff kind of hack it out the front lines and those worlds collide in ways that you can't really put them together. You can't really identify it as well because it's not tangible, but you can feel the tension. And as much as you can integrate yourself into their world and gain that trust again, it's going to be great. And it'll make these next steps really that much more successful.
Fantastic. Yeah. I think that gives us a good foundation for step one, which is gaining understanding of the issues. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Yeah. So gaining understanding of the issues, not just identifying that there are issues, but it's trying to sort of implement that the five whys of why is this way. And then when the answer comes back, you ask why again? And you get further and further down to determine what the root cause is. Sort of a root cause analysis of the problem. Because maybe there is an issue that you see on the surface, but it's really rooted in an employee's inability to follow directions, for example. And so you might think everyone's to blame for where a particular item makes its way on the bar, or that a report wasn't put in the proper bin. Office world is not my world, so I don't know what those problems exactly are. But you have to know inside and out the whys behind it, or else you can't address it fully and you can't respect the necessity for it. Because oftentimes solutions to problems that are unaddressed by managers are invented by staff for their own survival. So if somebody doesn't fix piece of equipment and you cobble together a fix that allows you to do your job and somebody gets on you about that issue, you feel really violated because you were just doing it because no one else was. You wouldn't know that unless you really dug deep. For me, I think it's really key because I can tend to be the guy that goes in and says all of this needs to change. I have a list, I have a clipboard. In fact, I went into one shop that I was hired to help systematize and I had a clipboard with me, which I like clipboards and I think they're great for providing resistance for paper. And that's all I thought. So I did my thing and come to find out that I was seen as this overlording, be gone with you type of figure. They were not really happy with that because I wasn't really coming in there as on their side. It was like I was dissecting them instead of assisting them. So gaining understanding of the issue has less to do with sort of poking and prodding as it does coming alongside and asking questions to discover with empathy what is going on with this issue. Not in an accusatory way, not in a gotcha sort of way, but in a way that seeks to benefit the individuals that they can really see in the cadence of your voice and the way that your eyes are. If it's not genuine, people are going to tell. Especially if you're an authority, people just zoom in on you way more than you realize. So this has got to come from the heart to gain understanding. So what we do is once we gain understanding of the issue and it still needs to change, if it's truly something that needs to change, you've got to get feedback from the people in.
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So all of that is critical. Now that's a mouthful, but it probably makes a lot of sense to your audience and anybody who's in, you know, in charge of people will kind of understand that, nod knowingly. But when it comes to actually doing it, sometimes we can flounder. The next step within this gaining understanding thing is you have to receive feedback from the employees and include them in the process. So it's not just about gathering information that you can use to make a decision, it's about gathering ideas as well. So people who work the front lines of a coffee bar might have identified a kink in the workflow where you could make a drink faster if we just fill in the blank. What is the process from making this workflow a lot more efficient and making customers happier, making you happier. They've thought of it. You have to check your pride in this situation because sometimes we want to be the idea generator so that we can go back to our boss and say, hey, my idea is stamped on this company. So again, include people in the process is really critical because that endears them to you and it actually is going to be them who are the enforcers of the change. When you're not there, you want them to not only trust you, but but fully adopt and buy into whatever it is that is going to take the place of what they already know, right?
Oh, this is brilliant. I really like this. And there are a few questions that have come up for me, especially when it comes to the information gathering stage in the gaining understanding step of this process. What it seems like is that coming into this, it's easy for us as the self proclaimed experts to feel as though we know what the right answer is. And along with that mentality comes with a set of assumptions about what's happening here. And the issue with assumptions is that it stifles our curiosity. And so we don't feel as though we need to ask questions and learn because we already know the answer. So along with that you mentioned earlier, we need to check our pride. Approach this with the requisite humility. But how do we do that? How would you suggest that somebody in this position operates without these assumptions getting in the way of asking great questions and learning from the people that they're working with?
Yeah, that's definitely tricky because each person has a different level of pride or different soup mix of emotions and motives and things like that. And I think it's really the how is more about self discovery, self knowledge. And it's not like you can just go online and take a quiz and find out, oh, here's how I check my pride before going into a meeting. It might take you some time to discover what your motives are. It's actually a little bit messy to find out about yourself and it's a journey of self discovery. But I would say for our purposes today that you need to understand what your why is when you go into it. And that it's not about you and it's not about your legacy and it's not a selfish motive, but that you kind of dwell on the benefit for the others involved. Actually think about them as more than just units and pieces. That if you just got this person out of the way, if you just got this person into a position of power or yourself into a position of power, then everything would be better. You really just have to do the work to begin to foster genuine feelings of generosity towards the people that you're leading, or else you probably will just fill in that void with self interest, pride, or whatever it is. So I think actually a good book for this is a book that I'm listening to for the second time called Leadership and Self Deception by the Arbinger Institute. And it's a fantastic sort of story based on business fable, if you will, about getting out of your own head and treating people like people. And it's really transformational. And so I would recommend listeners get that book, listen to it and you'll see what I mean. Like now you'll be in a position after applying some of the things in that book to go in there with a little less of me focus and a little bit more of we focus.
I appreciate that. We always like a good book recommendation on this show. One of the things that you mentioned earlier was the importance of involving them in the process. And we know that, especially if you have been brought in from the Outside with the task of instituting change, they can see you a little bit as the enemy. So how can we make them feel comfortable in engaging in this process collaboratively?
Well, I'd say asking questions again would be a good one because most of the time when you come into a situation that requires changes, you are coming into a situation that has a communication issue and you are going to immediately, by asking questions and seeking to really understand where people are coming from, you're going to win them over just a little bit in that moment because you're providing them something that may be their boss or in my position coming in as a consultant, maybe they're reporting directly to a supervisor. But you as the manager of those supervisors have the task of listening to their qualms about a new software or a new process of managing leads, whatever it might be. When you listen to people, you give them your ear and you let them know that their opinion is important. So you hear all the time. People just want to be heard and understood. Even if you don't take their idea and apply it necessarily, they're still going to feel a little bit more comfortable with you because at least you've gone that far. And so there's some practical things. I mean, if you're the type of person like I am that has a really pronounced brow, for example, you will be told that you're intimidating or that you always look angry. This is a problem for a lot of really serious, detail focused people. They're serious at times, too much. And you need to soften up the way that you communicate and the way that you come off to people. Your presence has to be purposeful and you have to calculate what you're doing. You can't just waltz in there and necessarily be yourself. You've got to be what they need. That's going to be somebody who comes with a hard hitting solution to a problem. And you could also have a soft approach. I think this might be referred to as the velvet hammer approach in terms of management. But that would be what I'd say to that. It's kind of a non answer because it's such a huge topic, right?
No, it makes a lot of sense. And a couple things that I want to focus in on there. When it comes to collaborating with them in this and asking questions and learning. One of the things that I like to keep in mind is the idea that everybody is an expert in something. And when I think about it that way, there are certain things that these people know because of their life experience and on a deeper level than I will ever get to. And in order for me to be at my best, I need to learn from this expert. This person might be an expert in this culture, their colleagues, what works in this company, what doesn't work in their company, all of these things. And so the way that I find my humility is I don't just focus on my expertise, I also focus on theirs. And it's really intriguing when you think about conversations with people in this way, because now it's almost like a game. I know because of your life experiences, you have a deep level of expertise in something. And I'm going to ask questions and listen until I find that thing and then you're going to educate me and you're going to make me smarter. So that's one thing that I do when it comes to listening. And then with regard to what you said earlier about having a pronounced brow, I think that's really funny because it takes a significant level of self awareness to recognize how you come off to other people. When I'm mediating, for example, sometimes the room in the courthouse that we use is cold. And so at the beginning of the mediation, I tell people, hey, listen, I'm a Caribbean American and I don't handle cold very well. And so because of that, I'm going to cross my arms and cross my legs. And I don't want you to feel as though this is an indication of my dissatisfaction or skepticism. I am just cold. Okay? So then when they see that body language, it's not scary to them because I've prepared them, I've set that expectation, and so now they don't read too much into it.
That's great. And ironically, it warms them up to you.
Exactly.
One thing that I was thinking was another tactic that you could use is to just think of the big picture and the outcome instead of the minutiae as the goal for yourself. If you're going into the situation just concerned with all of the I's being dotted and the T's being crossed and all of the details that go into big picture change, you're going to really steamroll people. But the means are less important than the end. And if you're just concerned about getting a great result in the end, you're not going to be fighting for little turf battles in terms of whose idea was it? And this is about my pride or whatever it is. These are petty things. When you're really focused on the big picture outcome, because that's really what's going to reflect good on you is what you achieve in the end, how you achieve it is important for sure, but you can't really get a great result by lording it over people and being concerned about only yourself.
I think that's a really great point. And then one other thing I'd like to add at the end, before we move into step two, is that part of the gaining of understanding needs to include getting a general understanding of the biases at play within the conversation. And usually when we hear the word bias, we think of racial or gender or cultural bias. But in this case, we also need to consider bias in terms of the way that they see you. So a bias is a preference to something or a negative attitude towards something. Right. That doesn't, that isn't necessarily based in fact. And so for them looking at you, there's a bias because they see you as this change agent and it makes it more likely for them to see you as somebody who might be a little bit self righteous, oh, you think you're better than me, those type of things. And so what ends up happening is that words that you say are going to be filtered through that lens. And, and if there's something that is ambiguous that you say, they are more likely to perceive it negatively because of their bias. And then similarly for us, if we are the change agents, we're the people who want to institute some kind of change within the culture or the business operations, we're going to be biased towards change. And I tell my clients this all the time when it comes to business negotiations, when the deal is done and we're just reviewing the contract, I tell them that there is a bias, that I have to mark up the contract because I want to let the client know that I'm working. It's like, hey, there's no subject, verb, agreement here. You know what, they really shouldn't have used this word here, but it doesn't have any legal significance. I just want to show them that I'm working and that's my bias. And so here, maybe there are certain things that work fine, but we're going to be biased towards changing it because we want to feel significant. And so recognizing both of the biases that are in play in people on the other side and in ourselves, that's going to help us to be a lot more persuasive as well.
Yeah, that's a great point. It's like everyone who's been a teenager at 16 or 17 wants to change the world, but they hardly even understand the world yet. They just want to change everything.
Yes, yep. Well, perfect. Well, let's move on to step two.
So, yeah, step two is to highlight the payoff for the culture and in particular, the group of people that you know are going to be carriers. The program or the process or whatever it is that you're putting in place, what's in it for them? Is it a better working environment? Do you have the numbers to show how it's going to be better? Do you know enough about the nuances of their workday to be able to identify actually what's going to be the payoff? So if you've done the work of understanding the issue and previous to that, you've created an environment of trust, chances are you do know, and you can lay out one after the other, well, here's what you guys do all day, and here's how this is going to positively impact what you do. Diane, I know that you complain about this thing here that you always have to deal with every day. Well, it's going to change in this way. And I know that something that you vocalized before, it's something that this will actually address. This change will address that thing. So by making it specific and by making it relevant to the culture, then you are speaking their language. And the language that they speak is not the language of the training manual or whatever onboarding materials they were given or emailed. Those are highly manicured, robotic. As much as we try to dress it up with hip language and whatnot, it's like your mom trying to make a joke with you and your friends. Sometimes it just falls flat. We're not going to bridge that gap so easily. We should just focus on understanding where they're coming from and highlight that payoff for the culture. Say what's in it for me is the question that most people have, is something they tell you when you're learning how to speak in front of groups, that you have to address the issue of what's in it for them and tell them what's in it for them, because that's what they're asking themselves, either explicitly or subconsciously. This step, too, I think, is it's important that you differentiate culture from company because they're looking out for their own interest, and if they see that you're not looking out for their own interest, then that's going to really kind of drive a wedge between you and them, and the change is probably not going to take the way that you want it to.
I love this point, and I think this is a brilliant point because it's. It's more than just Highlighting what's in it for them. But it also requires a lot of listening, so you can phrase the benefit to them in a way that they would acknowledge and respect. And so, for instance, in law, what we always say is the phrase that pays. So oftentimes with case history, there is a specific set of wording that's used in different cases to emphasize a specific point. And so when you're writing your briefs or your memos or your motions, what you often do is you just parrot the word that has been said before or the phrase that has been said before and just don't use synonyms. Don't try to use different wording or anything like that. You just say the same thing over and over and over again because the judge, the court, the other opposing counsel, they'll recognize and respect that. And a really simple example of it where it comes to persuasion is sometimes when my son Kai is bored and he wants me to play with him, he could say, hey, daddy, do you want to play Transformers? Or something like that. That's not as persuasive. But if he looks sad and says nobody will play with me, I just sprint over to him and say, I'm coming, Kai. Because for the listeners who know me, my book is titled Nobody Will Play With Me. And it's a story of when nobody would play with me on the playground and how that affected the way I interacted with people for years down the line. So when he uses that exact same phrase in the way that I would and have, it has a significantly more powerful impact with regard to persuasion. So if we listen and hear the commonalities between the people who are working there and the words that they used repeatedly, and then we mimic that in the way that we propose our solutions, then they'll really register, it'll resonate with them when it comes comes to accepting the solution that you provide.
Love it. That's a great point.
Fantastic. Well, let's move on to number three.
All right, so number three, let's just hypothetically, before we get to number three, I think it's important to know these are three things. You might have five things. There's stuff that could go on between all this. You can extrapolate this out into 10 things. These are general steps that you want to make sure to hit. So it's not exhaustive necessarily in each process of change. I think you said it earlier, Kwame, it's a long term thing. It can take a long time. And so don't let the three steps fool you because it's Clickbaity for sure, and it's meant to be palatable. But I hope that the substance of what we're talking about gives you enough curiosity to dive in and discover that, yes, this is a long term thing. It's going to take a lot more work than just took to listen to this podcast. So number three is, let's say you have all of the aforementioned steps unlock. You got them understanding the issues and now you are going to implement this change. It's important to have a game plan for the implementation of the change and not just to switch everything out overnight in a noble, self sacrificing, overnight effort on your part just to make everybody pissed off at you the next day. This happens often in coffee shops where a manager has an idea to switch the jars out that people keep tea in. It just happens overnight and there's new jars the next morning. Problem is that the spoons aren't long enough to actually reach down into the new jars. Nobody really thought of that. Then you're going to have the opportunity to implement this change, which is really exciting, but you still have to take your time and do it well. And that's where step three comes in and that's having a game plan for when it's going to happen. All what, when, how, who? All of the details. Communicate what the details are to the staff and give them a schedule and prepare them to receive this. Because you're going to have to dismantle some things in this process in order to replace it with the brand new. You have to be dedicated to facilitating their success in tangible ways so that this is not happening to them, it's happening for them. Like we said in these last steps, they hopefully understand this by now. This is something that is in their best interest. They're actually part of this solution and part of this process and they're bought in. But if it's not implemented well, then they're going to be a lover scorned. I think you had all of this promise, it had all of these positive things attached to it, but if it's put in place hastily, if it's dysfunctional, then people are really going to call you on that and they're going to be less likely to be in favor of this change anymore because at least we knew what the dysfunctions were of the old system and we had adapted ourselves to it, this new one. Now we've got to adapt ourselves to a whole new dysfunction because management couldn't wait long enough for this season of heavy work this week to be over to Implement it during a slow time, next week, for instance. So that's where step three comes in. This plan needs to be something that takes into account all the moving pieces and, with respect, implements the change gradually in a way that really doesn't upset things too much.
Right. And one thing that we always say on the podcast is the gap between expectations and reality is the amount of disappointment, frustration, and hurt that people are going to feel. And it's the violation of expectations that leads to the breakdown of relationships. And so what you're doing here is you're clearly setting those expectations so people will know when, what to expect, so they're not surprised. That's the goal. We want to avoid bad surprises. So when I'm working with people, I always say, there will only be good surprises, no bad surprises, because I want you to know what's happening. And the point about gradual changes is really important because we want quick wins and we want it all at one time. But the problem is that when it comes to these. These situations where we're trying to change the hearts and minds and behavior of people, the more change that happens in a shorter period of time, the more perceived risk is going to be there. And so we want to ease people in to these new systems and processes so that they can adapt and then move forward in a way that's beneficial to the company.
Yeah, agreed. And that's just respect. It's respect for the people, it's respect for their work. And when it's not done that way, then people feel disrespected and it's hard for them to get over that. And collectively, again, people look out for themselves. That clique of people, that culture, you're not a part of it. Honestly, this is another part of Stan Slapp's book that I like. No matter how much you try, if you're a leader, if you're a manager of people, you're just not one of them. And I would never recommend somebody try to just do a friendship model of management, necessarily, because there is always going to be that sign posted on your forehead that says, I can fire you. And that's huge. That's the difference between you and them. It's not that you're better, it's just positionally they consider you other. And because of that, you really do need to do a lot of work when you're seeking to reach into something that's sacred to them. Their space, their routines, their habits. Coffee is a huge one. Coffee menus change all the time. And we do it with a lot of trepidation sometimes. Sometimes too much trepidation. Some people don't raise their prices often enough to change with the market. But there are times when things just disappear off the menu that have been long standing items and they're not just missed. People get genuinely upset because that was their world. It might not just be an employee, in coffee bar's case, it's a customer. But they've come to rely on a particular set of expectations, like you said. And when all of a sudden they come in and it's like we're not doing that anymore, it's like, well, nobody told me that or nobody consulted with me. And the same is true here. This change is something that needs to not all of a sudden turn ugly in the last minute. And it definitely can. I want to mention something that I think is really appropriate, which is Seth Godin, brilliant speaker, author. One of the things that he talks about in software development is thrashing. How thrashing is when you add a bunch of last minute tweaks and edits and changes right before launch of a product and it caus all sorts of bottlenecking and confusion and that you want to thrash early in the process and not at the very end. If you're answering to somebody else for this change, you need to make sure that not only are the people in your culture that are going to shoulder this change on board and have all of their voices heard, but the voices of those people who are going to hold you accountable for the success of the change are also going to be on board with all of this stuff. So that at the last minute, all of a sudden you don't get the from on high change this thing or else. And then all of that goodwill that you've cultivated with your people just goes to pot. Because now the boss is telling you that it has to change and it really reflects bad on you and the company. So getting all of that input in the beginning is critical. And then of course, like we said, having a plan for implementation that respects the people that are going to shoulder it is critical also. Critical, right?
Man, this has been great. This has been really, really great information, Chris. I appreciate it. Before you go though, I want you to let the listeners know more about your work and where they can get in touch with you.
Great, thanks. Yeah, this has been really fantastic and I really enjoy talking about this. People can find out more about me just going to keystotheshop.com and there is pages for all of the episodes for the podcast. There's also a consulting page where you can learn about what I offer to coffee shops. And it doesn't necessarily need to be coffee shops. People in charge of teams, especially in retail, is one of my fortes. And so, yeah, keystotheshop.com if you want to follow me on Instagram, too. It's the same thing at keystotheshop. And you can also reach out to me via email just Chris C H R I s@keystotheshop.com Perfect.
Thank you again, Chris. We really appreciate it.
Well, thank you, Kwame. It's really an honor to be on your show.
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